STATES OF AMERICA - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

STATES OF AMERICAAuthored

The Law Mind • 607 words

Definition

"States of America" is not a standalone legal term. It appears as the concluding phrase of the formal title "United States of America," which is the official constitutional designation for the federal republic established by the Constitution of 1787. The phrase has no independent legal meaning when separated from "United States of America" or "President of the United States of America."

As part of the full constitutional title, "United States of America" denotes the sovereign nation formed by the union of the several states, possessing full legal personality in domestic and international law. It is the entity that enters treaties, prosecutes federal crimes, holds federal property, and is named as a party in federal litigation.

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Common Confusion

This entry exists because Bouvier's source material appears to have been captured as a fragment — the full entry being treated concerns the President of the United States of America, not "States of America" as a discrete term. Researchers encountering this heading in an index or database should understand they are likely looking at a truncated or miskeyed reference to one of two complete terms:

1. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA — the official name of the federal sovereign.
2. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA — the constitutional officer described in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution.

The Bouvier's passage reproduced in the source material addresses presidential eligibility, confirming the fragment belongs to the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES entry, not a freestanding term "States of America."

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Why It Matters in Research

Researchers working with digitized or transcribed historical legal dictionaries will occasionally encounter truncated headings produced by OCR errors, page breaks, or indexing artifacts. "States of America" as a standalone heading in Bouvier's or any comparable dictionary is almost certainly a fragment of a longer title entry.

When navigating the Law Mind corpus, if a search or index returns "States of America" as a term, treat it as a signal to:

1. Check the surrounding pages or entries for the full term ("United States of America," "President of the United States of America," or a related compound).
2. Verify whether the source entry addresses the office of the presidency, federal sovereign capacity, or citizenship — all of which appear in close proximity in Bouvier's text.
3. Cross-reference against the complete Bouvier's entry for PRESIDENT, which covers constitutional eligibility requirements, the vesting of executive power, and the formal title of the office as it appears in Article II.

The Bouvier's fragment here reproduces language directly from Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution regarding natural-born citizenship requirements for presidential eligibility. That substantive content belongs to the PRESIDENT entry, and any research following up on the citizenship or eligibility material should proceed there.

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Historical Dictionary Support

Bouvier's Law Dictionary does not treat "States of America" as an independent term. The reproduced passage — addressing the vesting of executive power, the title "President of the United States of America," and the natural-born citizen eligibility requirement — is consistent with Bouvier's standard entry structure for PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. The fragment cuts off mid-sentence on the eligibility clause, suggesting a database or transcription break rather than a complete entry.

No other major historical legal dictionary (Black's, Burrill's, Rapalje & Lawrence) carries a freestanding entry for "States of America." The phrase carries legal significance only as part of the full constitutional title.

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STATES OF AMERICAmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

The title of the chief executive officer of the United States. The constitution directs that the execu- tive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America. Art. 2, s. 1. No person except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the constitution, shall be eligible to the office of president; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained the age of thirty-five years and been fourteen years resident within the United States. Art. 2, s. 1, par. 5. He is chosen by presidential electors (q. ข.). See 1 1 Kent 276; Story, Const. 5th ed. § 1453. The votes of the electors are trans- mitted to the vice-president and by him opened in the presence of both houses of congress and counted by tellers previously selected by the two houses separately. If there is no election, a president is chosen by the house of representatives, the mem- bers voting by states, from the candidates not exceeding three, having the highest number of electoral votes. In case of a vacancy the vice-president succeeds, and if there be none then the members of the cabinet succeed in a pre- scribed order. See CABINET. The president shall, at stated times, re- ceive for his services a compensation which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the period for which he shall have been elected; and he shall not receive within that period any other emolument from the United States, or any of them. Art. 2, s. 1, par. 7. The act of March 3d, 1873, c. 226, fixed the salary of the pres- ident at fifty thousand dollars. In addition to certain specified powers, the president is vested by the constitution with the executive power of the federal government and the duty of seeing that the laws are faithfully executed. As to his powers, generally, and the historical development of the executive office, see